Speaker 1: Warning, Today's episode will contain some minor spoilers for various
Speaker 1: David Lynch films and television shows, notably Twin Peaks. There
Speaker 1: is no film, it's all an illusion. That's a David
Speaker 1: Lynch reference, so be warned. Hello, Naman's Jason Concepcion.
Speaker 2: And I'm Rosday Nike and welcome back to X.
Speaker 1: Ray Vision of that podcast or wed I'm deep. Okay,
Speaker 1: your favorite shows, movies, comics and pop culture coming from
Speaker 1: my podcast where we'll bring you three one two, three
Speaker 1: Godays episodes a week every Tuesday and Thursday for sure,
Speaker 1: and then an extra day thrown in there. You sometimes Wednesday, sometimes.
Speaker 2: You never know when it's coming. And into episode, we
Speaker 2: have got our coffees and our pies, cherry pies, and
Speaker 2: we are here to honor the late David Lynch. As
Speaker 2: soon as he passed, we were in the group chat
Speaker 2: we were like, it's got to be done. So today
Speaker 2: we're gonna do it. We're gonna look back a time
Speaker 2: capsule of all the film and television works so you
Speaker 2: should add to your collection and check out and how
Speaker 2: they impacted us. And in the back matter, we're going
Speaker 2: to discuss what makes Lynch such an iconic figure in
Speaker 2: cinema and pop culture history.
Speaker 1: But first previously on Well Rosie. David Lynch passed away
Speaker 1: recently and I'm here in La. You're here in La.
Speaker 1: There is currently a memorial, a public memorial of sorts
Speaker 1: at the La the Burbank Bob's Big Boy, where the
Speaker 1: filmmaker would often get lunch around two three.
Speaker 2: Drink his coffee in his chocolate milkshake. You can see
Speaker 2: him to Luca Lake, I think regularly. That's one thing
Speaker 2: I think people don't understand about the magic of La is,
Speaker 2: like it is magical to be here. Generally there's palm trees,
Speaker 2: there's sun, there's beaches, there's mountains, there's there's you know,
Speaker 2: horrible fires that we were living through and sending our
Speaker 2: hopes and prayers to that. But like there is it's
Speaker 2: still a movie making town. Like you can just be
Speaker 2: hanging out and just see someone like David Lynch in
Speaker 2: a diner or go to a screening and see some
Speaker 2: like incredible artists that you never thought you would get
Speaker 2: to see in real life. Like it's pretty magical in
Speaker 2: that way. It still is a movie making town. And
Speaker 2: I think someone like Lynch because of his you know,
Speaker 2: unique form and play within film, but also his like
Speaker 2: strange accessibility and sincerity, Like people knew that you could
Speaker 2: just go that him and John Carpenter would be there,
Speaker 2: just like having lunch at Big Boy. Yeah, and now
Speaker 2: there's a very beautiful, very big probably soon to get
Speaker 2: too big. Might have to get it.
Speaker 1: As soon to get too big. It might be too
Speaker 1: big as we speak, When did you first become aware
Speaker 1: of David Lynch the guy? Not just because I remember
Speaker 1: the I first saw Elevant man like as a child
Speaker 1: and that was the first one I saw, But I
Speaker 1: didn't know about him until years later. So when did
Speaker 1: you first become aware of him as a personality as
Speaker 1: a person?
Speaker 2: Okay, so before I was even born. My mom always
Speaker 2: blames this for me being like weird. But she she
Speaker 2: went to the Rio Cinema in Dalston and when she
Speaker 2: was pregnant and they did a mom and baby screening
Speaker 2: of Blue Velvet and you could like take your kid
Speaker 2: and go and see it, and she'd had it was good,
Speaker 2: So she went and she was pregnant and she was
Speaker 2: like so mortified when Dennis Hopper like had the gas
Speaker 2: mask on and he was like I want to get
Speaker 2: back inside when he's like trying to, you know, And
Speaker 2: and she left, and she's always been like, you know,
Speaker 2: maybe that's why, like you like all this weird stuff
Speaker 2: because when you were in you I went to see
Speaker 2: Blue Velvet. But I when I was a kid, my
Speaker 2: best friend donoll we were just into like really weird
Speaker 2: stuff and I we had probably already seen the June movie,
Speaker 2: but I do really distinctly remember we went to see
Speaker 2: My Holland Drive at the cinema in two thousand and one,
Speaker 2: so we would have been thirteen, and we specifically like
Speaker 2: went to see that movie because we like David Lynch.
Speaker 2: We'd gotten old David Lynch movies out of the video
Speaker 2: store that we had where we lived in Hackney. And yeah,
Speaker 2: I remember really distinctly both of us just being like, WHOA,
Speaker 2: what like a crazy movie? And that was really another
Speaker 2: step towards my kind of cinephile story. So that was
Speaker 2: definitely it. And I still hold like a very special
Speaker 2: place in my heart for My Holland Drive, and I
Speaker 2: still get that feeling every time, like if you're driving
Speaker 2: in LA and you see My Holland Drive, I'm always
Speaker 2: like that's my Holland Drive, like the there is like
Speaker 2: I know this, It's from movies. So I would definitely
Speaker 2: say that was a big one. But I think the
Speaker 2: reason that we were even aware of who he was
Speaker 2: was probably because of Twin Peaks for sure.
Speaker 1: I think for me, I first saw The Elephant Man
Speaker 1: as a kid. It was playing on cable all the time,
Speaker 1: and I was very, very affected by that movie. It's
Speaker 1: a tremendously one of the most beautiful modern black and
Speaker 1: white films, I think, yeah, and it is a heartbreaking
Speaker 1: film the end. It's about a man who is born
Speaker 1: with severe physical deformities to the point that he can't
Speaker 1: He has to sleep standing like sitting up because he
Speaker 1: lays down he'll suffocate. And he's kept in a like
Speaker 1: as a circus performer, like in a cage. But he's
Speaker 1: very sensitive, very intelligent, and as he says in the
Speaker 1: film many times, not an animal. He's mellows in this
Speaker 1: really affecting way, and it really it really it. As
Speaker 1: a kid, it really broke my heart. I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, this is one of the most sad
Speaker 1: things I've ever seen. And then of course I saw Dune,
Speaker 1: but I didn't make that this is all as a kid,
Speaker 1: so I didn't make the connection of you know, David
Speaker 1: Lynch and as as a director, and I don't think
Speaker 1: I had a tremendous idea about directors and what they did.
Speaker 1: So and then I saw Dune, which I loved as
Speaker 1: a kid. Although I found it tremendously weird.
Speaker 2: It's very very weird, but very appealing to the eye
Speaker 2: of a child because there's so much great stuff going on.
Speaker 1: That I thought it was great and I still think
Speaker 1: it's great. And then and then you're right, Twin Peaks
Speaker 1: was a sensation. But as a person, David Lynch, I
Speaker 1: want to say, this is sometime during the Twin Peaks run,
Speaker 1: And again I was very young, and I didn't have
Speaker 1: a lot of parental supervision, and I was always up
Speaker 1: late watching late night television, like starting in the fourth grade,
Speaker 1: fourth fifth grade, I just would stay up late and
Speaker 1: lunch like Letterman and Lynch appeared on and My he
Speaker 1: talked about Twin Peaks a little bit. And then I
Speaker 1: recall David's like, you brought something for us to see
Speaker 1: and he's like yeah, and he brings out like this
Speaker 1: collection of photographs and he had he talked about how
Speaker 1: he was walking around outside his house and he saw
Speaker 1: his line of ants, so he took a toothpick, and
Speaker 1: on the toothpick he mounted a ball of meat and
Speaker 1: cheese I think, and then he covered the meat and
Speaker 1: cheeseball with clay, and then you know, carved like eye
Speaker 1: holes and then a mouth and I think nose holes
Speaker 1: and like these little kind of like Shrek like ears
Speaker 1: out of clay, and the holes allowed the ants to
Speaker 1: get in, and then he mounted it right in the
Speaker 1: path of the ants and then just took pictures of
Speaker 1: like the ants going into the eye holes and like
Speaker 1: carving out the meat and taking it away. And I
Speaker 1: had never seen anything like that on television. Don't work television,
Speaker 1: I'm like, and it was I was like, Wow, what
Speaker 1: a tremendously weird guy. And I've always been fascinated by, like,
Speaker 1: truly sincerely weird people. And that was my first understanding
Speaker 1: of David Lynch's, like oh shit, he's weird. And then
Speaker 1: it wasn't until college that I watched Blue Velvet and
Speaker 1: was just blown away by the everything of it. We'll
Speaker 1: describe what that means in a bit, but I mean,
Speaker 1: what would you say, are the hallmarks of David Lynch.
Speaker 1: What would you say are the themes and the devices
Speaker 1: that many of his films have in common and the
Speaker 1: things that he would you can feel that he's interested
Speaker 1: in through his movies.
Speaker 2: I think, like a sincere interest in the concept of
Speaker 2: like America and Americana.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's right. It's a Midwestern guy from small
Speaker 1: town America.
Speaker 2: What does it mean to be in America whether you're
Speaker 2: in a rural area, which Twin Peaks explores this kind
Speaker 2: of idea of like the idyllic notion of like nature
Speaker 2: and living with nature, and the dangers and the secrets
Speaker 2: that hide behind small town life, which is also very
Speaker 2: apparent in like Blue Velvet. But then also like Wild
Speaker 2: at Heart with Laura Dunn and Nick Cage, that is
Speaker 2: a movie that's very concerned with this kind of like
Speaker 2: over the top, violent, embellished kind of road trip version
Speaker 2: of what Americana can be, Like Las Vegas driving down
Speaker 2: Route sixty six. He was just a man who was
Speaker 2: very interested in telling a story about the place that
Speaker 2: he lived. And I think that that goes from anything
Speaker 2: from like Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, Lost Highway, Wild at Heart,
Speaker 2: More Holland drive. Obviously, then you're getting into the very
Speaker 2: specifically LA movies, but also the straight Story, which I
Speaker 2: think a lot of people have really been revisiting, which
Speaker 2: seemed at the time in nineteen ninety nine like this
Speaker 2: just absolute diversion from David Lynch's which was generally seen
Speaker 2: as controversial and shocking and very adult. And the straight
Speaker 2: story is just about a guy who drives his lawn
Speaker 2: mower across the country to see his friends. Yeah, based
Speaker 2: on a true story, and it's very ironically. It really
Speaker 2: reminds me of another one of my favorite Stone Cold widows,
Speaker 2: Berna Herzog. He wrote this book about walking across the
Speaker 2: country to see his friend who had cancer. And I
Speaker 2: think that there is this similarity of interest in both
Speaker 2: the tiniest stories, like what would drive somebody to do that?
Speaker 2: How much do you have to love someone? And there's
Speaker 2: this very affecting moment in the straight story that a
Speaker 2: lot of people have been sharing where the guy's like, oh,
Speaker 2: you came all this way from me, and he's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I did. And it's kind of this acknowledgment of like
Speaker 2: humanity and friendship and male friendship and platonic love, and
Speaker 2: it's this really tiny moment in what is like a
Speaker 2: very vast story, and what was seen at the time
Speaker 2: is like why did he make this? But when you
Speaker 2: look at it in the context of the rest of
Speaker 2: his movies, I think it makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2: I also would say, obviously like surrealism, especially if you're
Speaker 2: looking at like Eraise Ahead, which I think was another
Speaker 2: movie that I saw really really young that scared me.
Speaker 2: Everyone was like, oh my god, you don't want to
Speaker 2: see the erais Ahead baby, like nobody film. Yeah, Yeah, definitely,
Speaker 2: like wait what and that was from nineteen seventy seven.
Speaker 2: It feels very ahead of its sky. It feels very
Speaker 2: akin to like a Tetsuo The Iron Man, or like
Speaker 2: international cinema cinema from Japan around the same time, or
Speaker 2: in the late eighties.
Speaker 1: In early twentieth century films like Metropolis.
Speaker 2: Yeah, very that's definitely very in his vein, and I
Speaker 2: think that mixture.
Speaker 1: I think is very much referenced in the opening of
Speaker 1: it too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh man, I used to love that movie. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I would say, I think another thing that comes across
Speaker 2: in all of his movies. Whether he's acting in a movie,
Speaker 2: everyone's been sharing his performance as John Houston. In Spielberg's
Speaker 2: The Fableman's that came out recently, he had like a
Speaker 2: short one horizon. Where's the horizon? I think about it
Speaker 2: a lot now. Whatever is at the top, it's interesting,
Speaker 2: it's at the bottom of the bottom, it's interesting. The
Speaker 2: middle it's boring. Get out. But like I think something
Speaker 2: that shines through is also just like a sincere love
Speaker 2: for cinema. Like he loves movie making. He loves the
Speaker 2: he loves art granularly it can be. He loves how
Speaker 2: the light hits the set. He loves the mees on
Speaker 2: sen he loves the production of making a movie. He
Speaker 2: loves the people he makes movies with. There's those incredible
Speaker 2: pictures of him when he was trying to get Laura
Speaker 2: don an oscar for Mulholland Drive, and he's sitting with
Speaker 2: the cow just on the side of the street outside
Speaker 2: the Academy with the big you know, for your consideration,
Speaker 2: Laura Dunn, this was just a man who's crely loved
Speaker 2: his country, his job, his life, the people he worked with,
Speaker 2: someone like Kyle McLaughlin, who is just such a fantastic
Speaker 2: talent who he feels, you know, he wrote a piece recently,
Speaker 2: and it was such a beautiful read basically about how
Speaker 2: David Lynch created him, Like there's no version of him
Speaker 2: that exists today without Lynch.
Speaker 1: Yeah, plucked him from obscurity, in his words.
Speaker 2: Because he did June, he did Blue Velvet, he did
Speaker 2: Twin Peaks. He managed to craft this enigmatic kind of
Speaker 2: career out of just working with this man who saw
Speaker 2: something in him and who was willing to play with
Speaker 2: him on screen. And I do think that Twin Peaks
Speaker 2: probably changed the trajectory of David Lynch's career in obviously
Speaker 2: many ways, like you're making mainstream TV, your name is
Speaker 2: getting out there, but more so in like a way
Speaker 2: of crafting a very passionate fandom. Like I worked at
Speaker 2: a movie thing in London called Genesis Cinema, and I
Speaker 2: worked at the bar and we hosted the Twin Peaks
Speaker 2: fest right one year, and I got to meet matgen
Speaker 2: Amchik and Sherylyn Fenn and it was really incredible. But
Speaker 2: the passion that the fans have for that show, I've
Speaker 2: only seen a kin is like comic Con.
Speaker 1: It's kind of amazing that it became a thing.
Speaker 2: People dressed up, they queued up they paid for signatures.
Speaker 2: Especially when the show came out, people who loved David
Speaker 2: Lynch at first were very confused by it because it
Speaker 2: was straight. It was kind of a straight down the
Speaker 2: line at the beginning.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, in the beginning, Yes, in the beginning, yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, as a murder mystery kill the ponds, because
Speaker 1: you're right, there is this wonderful mainstream hook of the
Speaker 1: murder mystery, and then it just evolves.
Speaker 2: Well, let's let's use this as.
Speaker 1: A jumping up the plane to talk about his work.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about his work starting with his first full
Speaker 1: length feature film, nineteen seventy Seven's a raser Head. Very
Speaker 1: much an art film, very much a film. Another film
Speaker 1: that I think is one of the great modern black
Speaker 1: and white films. It's about this guy, a racer head
Speaker 1: who you know, goes about living his very strange life
Speaker 1: in a unknown kind of industrial industry city and he
Speaker 1: has a lot of kind of dreamlike things happen to him.
Speaker 1: He has a there's a child involved. But it's really
Speaker 1: a kind of collection of visual tone poems that are
Speaker 1: really quite striking. It feels as if you are having
Speaker 1: a full length dream, is what yes film is.
Speaker 2: Like, I think it does establish that dream like nature
Speaker 2: that becomes a really big part of most of Lynch's films,
Speaker 2: especially Blue Velvet and Lost Highway, Amahalan Drive, and also
Speaker 2: I would say as well to a point June. I
Speaker 2: feel like a lot of what he did with June
Speaker 2: was like incredibly dreamlike and strange. But yeah, this was
Speaker 2: definitely the ultimate. Like when I was a teenager, you'd
Speaker 2: be like, oh my god, have you seen a rais ahead?
Speaker 2: Like you got to watch this, and we'd get it
Speaker 2: and everyone would freak out to see that a rais
Speaker 2: ahead baby, and I was I was overly scared of
Speaker 2: it as a child before i'd seen it, before realizing
Speaker 2: like anything, it's kind of you know these funny.
Speaker 1: It's mostly very weird and funny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, adults will always tell you like, oh, you got
Speaker 2: this is going to be really scary, and then you
Speaker 2: watch it and you're like, well, this is old. You
Speaker 2: know that I remember having that feeling.
Speaker 1: Well, I will say one of the things that I
Speaker 1: think that is present from the start of Lynch's filmography,
Speaker 1: and it's right here one is the kind of dreamlike
Speaker 1: the dreamlike quality, the intertextual quality. What I think he
Speaker 1: builds that dream like feeling with takes of unusual length.
Speaker 1: I don't mean long, and I don't mean short. I
Speaker 1: just mean longer than you would expect for a two
Speaker 1: shot conversation or shorter than you would expect for like
Speaker 1: a reaction shot, and shooting from strange angles, like angles
Speaker 1: that almost look like you're observing a scene from on
Speaker 1: the set, but in a different way. And then also
Speaker 1: this juxtaposition of normalcy and life with something really scary
Speaker 1: and gross.
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, definitely, And I mean I always remember reading
Speaker 2: Jennifer Lynch, who is now a filmmaker in Home Right,
Speaker 2: like David Lynch's daughter. She talked about how like she
Speaker 2: was born with like clubbed feet and had to have
Speaker 2: a lot of operations, and the kind of unexpected nature
Speaker 2: of her being born and then not being born disabled
Speaker 2: was like a big packed on the movie. But also
Speaker 2: so was living in Philadelphia, Like he loved Philadelphia, but
Speaker 2: he was living in Philadelphia in the seventies and he
Speaker 2: was seeing some stuff he was seeing.
Speaker 1: Referred to it as a very racist place, but also
Speaker 1: he liked it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was like he's really going through he was
Speaker 3: living in a what I think again, his love of
Speaker 3: like different sides of America and seeing this kind of
Speaker 3: industrial poverty stricken place.
Speaker 2: Also, something I think about a lot with The Raizorhead
Speaker 2: is like af I thought it was gonna be like
Speaker 2: a twenty minute movie, so they greenlit it because only
Speaker 2: had twenty one page screenplay, but David Lynch obviously was
Speaker 2: like no, So it took like over five years to make,
Speaker 2: and he was basically living off the fact that his
Speaker 2: childhood friend Jack Fisk and Sissy Spacek were just donating
Speaker 2: money to him. So it's essentially that thing as well
Speaker 2: of like you probably never get David Lynch without having
Speaker 2: a benefactor who saw that it was worth making this
Speaker 2: movie and for years supported him in his ability to
Speaker 2: make this movie that would go on to obviously spark
Speaker 2: this massive Korea And I think as well as something
Speaker 2: that's really interesting about a rais Ahead is it couldn't
Speaker 2: feel more tonally different than The Elephant Man, which is
Speaker 2: a pretty straight down the line like loose of a
Speaker 2: bio drama. Yeah, yeah, But the interesting thing about it
Speaker 2: is Elephant Man also deals in ideas and notions of
Speaker 2: like disability and acceptance and finding acceptance in a world
Speaker 2: where you are different, So I think it's interesting to
Speaker 2: kind of see those themes emerge. But yeah, obviously, then
Speaker 2: Elephant Man becomes like this massive cultural success. It's nominated
Speaker 2: for many many awards. John hurt Is obviously absolutely fantastic.
Speaker 2: It's definitely one of those movies in the annals of
Speaker 2: like disability cinema, kind of like Freaks. Freaks is still
Speaker 2: pretty much the only major studio movie that's ever been
Speaker 2: made with a majority disabled cast until the Woody Allen
Speaker 2: movie Champions recently, which was more of like a Bobby
Speaker 2: Fairley comedy. So, I you know, good for the actors
Speaker 2: who got paid in that. I love that for them,
Speaker 2: But like Freaks was like that, it's imperfect, but for
Speaker 2: a lot of disabled people, there's a lot to love
Speaker 2: about it.
Speaker 1: Or Revenge Film, I think exactly. It's a kind of
Speaker 1: our great revenge film.
Speaker 2: Revenge film, and also a film that, even though it
Speaker 2: was sold on this notion of like, oh, look at
Speaker 2: the freaky disabled people, it actually humanizes the disabled people.
Speaker 1: It's from their perspective. From me, take revenge, you.
Speaker 2: Get it exactly. So you mentioned the Elephant Man.
Speaker 1: Nineteen eighty Elephant Man, produced by Mel Brooks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which he did uncredited so people wouldn't think it
Speaker 2: was a comedy. And with the Elephant Man, it's another
Speaker 2: movie where you know, nowadays we have incredible actors like
Speaker 2: Adam Pearson, who you can currently see in a Different
Speaker 2: Man with Sebastian Stan, but you know, in the eighties
Speaker 2: they used John Hutt, they use prosthetics, and it still
Speaker 2: is a movie that is definitively a humanizing movie about risabilities.
Speaker 2: And I think that was like a huge moment. But
Speaker 2: then again, you get the next movie he does is Dune.
Speaker 2: You know, four years later that's crazy.
Speaker 1: Well, what's fascinating is so Elephant Man is, along with
Speaker 1: the straight story, I think his most to your point
Speaker 1: down the line film. It's a yeah, beginning middle and
Speaker 1: beginning middle, there are Lynchian things in there. The dreamlike
Speaker 1: quality is really pushed to the periphery. If it's there
Speaker 1: at all, it's there because of the stark and beautifully
Speaker 1: rich black and white photography. What is very Lynchian is
Speaker 1: his depiction of cruelty, which is stark in the film.
Speaker 1: But it's a regular it's a quote unquote normal movie,
Speaker 1: and I think off of the strength of that comes
Speaker 1: Dune he is tapped to adapt and direct the adaptation
Speaker 1: of one of the great sci fi works, with the
Speaker 1: idea that Dune would become as you know, Return of
Speaker 1: the Jedi had come out in nineteen eighty three, so
Speaker 1: the movie industry is thinking, where's our next star wars.
Speaker 1: Here's a classic sci fi why don't we do that.
Speaker 1: Let's tap this guy, David Lynch, up and coming filmmaker,
Speaker 1: young filmmaker in the mold of George Lucas who was
Speaker 1: also an art film guy. THHX you know is a
Speaker 1: very strange film, akin to erase her head in its
Speaker 1: own way. So I think they were thinking, Okay, here's
Speaker 1: our big chance, and it doesn't quite work out the
Speaker 1: way either Lynch or the studio on it. Lynch has
Speaker 1: complained that they took his vision away, they took his
Speaker 1: power away. That said, well, I was saying this before
Speaker 1: we turn the MIC's onto Joell, I get it. This
Speaker 1: is a big studio picture. Like I remember as a
Speaker 1: young kid that they had Kyle McLaughlin in the full
Speaker 1: still suit get up on fucking a cover on Wheatie's boxes,
Speaker 1: like on cereal boxes, because the idea was that they
Speaker 1: were gonna market this as eighties Star Wars, here's the
Speaker 1: new Star Wars. They were gonna push that this way,
Speaker 1: and I think in order to do that, you kind
Speaker 1: of do have to take the film from David Lynch,
Speaker 1: who is gonna go fucking crazy.
Speaker 2: Well, his original cut was like four hours long. Yeah, right,
Speaker 2: and also as well, you've got to understand, though, I
Speaker 2: will for David Lynch, who's coming into this right off
Speaker 2: the eight Academy nominations for The Elephant Man and then
Speaker 2: just like an art movie that he did for fun
Speaker 2: for five years, funded by his friends, he's coming into
Speaker 2: June that's been in production since like nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 2: Then in nineteen seventy four you get the Joderowski version
Speaker 2: where him and Dan O'Bannon essentially unintentionally collect all the
Speaker 2: creative team that would gone to work with Alien. When
Speaker 2: the Joderowski version fails, then in seventy six, and you know,
Speaker 2: Delaurentes is trying to do it, and then you know,
Speaker 2: and obviously you can watch the Joderarowski student documentary to
Speaker 2: find out about how that happened. But then Dino Dolaurentis
Speaker 2: came in. He hired Ridley Scott and then by the
Speaker 2: time that Lynch comes in, they've almost lost the rights.
Speaker 2: Then they get the rights back, and he is not
Speaker 2: necessarily in an ideal situation. Also, hilariously, speaking of Return
Speaker 2: of the Jedi, David Lynch actually did turn down the
Speaker 2: chance to direct Return of the Jedi, which is like
Speaker 2: still one of my favorite like what if movies of
Speaker 2: all time, and I love Return of the Jedi. But yeah,
Speaker 2: so he was really going through it. The movie came out,
Speaker 2: it was not necessarily seen as some great hit, but
Speaker 2: as always happened, it is now essentially like it got
Speaker 2: its own colleague following Yeah, one of my colleagues and
Speaker 2: friends that I made from set visits called Max. Every
Speaker 2: he did he wrote actually a book called a Masterpiece
Speaker 2: in Disarray, David Lynch's June and he interviewed David Lynch,
Speaker 2: He interviewed like Kyle, he interviewed bunch of people. He
Speaker 2: also found out that there had kind of been talk
Speaker 2: of Dune Too being made, and that there was kind
Speaker 2: of a screenplay that he had found he'd found like
Speaker 2: a treatment while he was in the archives at California
Speaker 2: State University. So there was meant to be a sequel.
Speaker 2: So I can't. I can imagine that was a tough situation.
Speaker 2: Max also interviewed me for that book, so if you
Speaker 2: want to get a copy of it, he interviewed a
Speaker 2: bunch of different people about their experiences of Doune. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I love that Dune movie. Virginia Madison is great. It's
Speaker 2: super weird. I do think we can say that when
Speaker 2: it comes to the adaptation and the nature of adaptations,
Speaker 2: Denny villanu has like created a Dune that feels much
Speaker 2: more akin to the books. But I think there is
Speaker 2: a lot of love and just absolute skill put into
Speaker 2: these movies and they just are inherently Lynchian in a
Speaker 2: way that's very enjoyable.
Speaker 1: I think that there is first of all, the aesthetic
Speaker 1: look and feel, the still suits, the guild navigators, the
Speaker 1: weirdness of spice and its effects. All of that is
Speaker 1: a foundational stone to the Denny Villeneuve Dune films. Like
Speaker 1: you really could not have the those films without what
Speaker 1: lynch did. You know you could if you watch the
Speaker 1: Generraski movie. Obviously there's a lot of things in there
Speaker 1: too that were influential. But Grasci was like a con man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's a fucking sucker.
Speaker 1: Come on, he was never gonna make them. You watch
Speaker 1: that if you really want to want to worry about
Speaker 1: one of the most quixotic cinema like projects of all time.
Speaker 1: That said, I think Lynch's I think you're right, Lynch's
Speaker 1: Dune is iconic in its own way. Even the things
Speaker 1: that were changed, which as a person who loves the
Speaker 1: books and thinks the film news adaptations are wonderful, I
Speaker 1: don't love, for instance, the voice and the way the
Speaker 1: voice is basically the force in Lynch's version. And that said, like,
Speaker 1: there's a scene in which they're training like the Fremen
Speaker 1: and the use of the voice, and I think that's
Speaker 1: one of the most compelling scenes in the film. Like,
Speaker 1: even like the stuff that I didn't like was like
Speaker 1: really done in a weird and interesting way. It was
Speaker 1: not the franchise starter that people were thinking. And then
Speaker 1: two years later Lynch emerges with Blue Velvet, which I
Speaker 1: didn't see until college, but is I think the purest
Speaker 1: distillation of the things that Lynch wants to do with
Speaker 1: film that he's interested in, and a way to kind
Speaker 1: of process a lot of the things that he's been
Speaker 1: working on through art in various mediums, painting and sculpture
Speaker 1: since childhood. And it's I mean, the story is about
Speaker 1: a college student who comes back to the suburbs and
Speaker 1: discovers a world of darkness and violence just there below
Speaker 1: the surface. And I think that if there's one thing
Speaker 1: that Lynch is interested in more than anything else, it's
Speaker 1: that idea that if you scratch the surface of any
Speaker 1: idyllic town that looks perfect Norman Rockwell perfect, there's something
Speaker 1: really dark there. He says in David Lynch, A Life
Speaker 1: of Art, there's a documentary on David Lynch on Max.
Speaker 1: He tells this story about when he was a kid
Speaker 1: playing with his brother and they're playing in the woods
Speaker 1: and a naked woman comes out of the woods and
Speaker 1: this is clearly the product of a violent attack that
Speaker 1: had happened. She comes staggering out of the woods and
Speaker 1: it was very strange and scary, and his brother started crying.
Speaker 1: And he talks a lot about what he was feeling
Speaker 1: at the time, how he wanted to help, but he
Speaker 1: didn't know what to do because he was a kid.
Speaker 1: And he says, after this, we were in this small town,
Speaker 1: living in this tiny town with like two streets but
Speaker 1: everything was there, all the worst things, all the best things,
Speaker 1: all that. There was like a million little worlds in
Speaker 1: this little town. And that's really what this movie is about.
Speaker 1: And it has some of the most jarring and troubling
Speaker 1: scenes of insane, unhinged violence. Yeah, and particularly violence against women,
Speaker 1: which I think is something that Lynch wanted to show
Speaker 1: people in a way that said, look.
Speaker 2: At this, this happens, This happens, Yeah, don't don't look away.
Speaker 2: And that's something throughout all of his work, All of
Speaker 2: this happens.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I would also say, like, it's really interesting
Speaker 2: because Dune, as much as it is beloved now, it
Speaker 2: was like a commercial failure and it was it was
Speaker 2: didn't make enough money. It was seen. I think it
Speaker 2: was named the worst movie of nineteen eighty four, so
Speaker 2: he was coming off faster. Yeah, very UNFAIRM sure there
Speaker 2: was much worse movies. But then this movie had kind
Speaker 2: of been being passed throughund the screenplay for it. It
Speaker 2: was really violent, really sexual. People didn't want to make it.
Speaker 2: But then Dino di Laurentis, who came in, he was like, okay,
Speaker 2: you did do and like, let's make this movie. And
Speaker 2: I love that again, that huge scope of Dune gets
Speaker 2: you know, focused into this tiny, very personal project and
Speaker 2: also sparks that conversation and in American cinema about what
Speaker 2: is the necessity of violence in cinema? Is it necessary?
Speaker 2: Is it too much? Is there a point to even
Speaker 2: have the conversation? Should some things just be allowed to
Speaker 2: be violent? And now, obviously this scene is like one
Speaker 2: of the greatest American movies of all time. I think
Speaker 2: Cite and Sound Time, Entertainment Weekly, BBC Magazine, in American
Speaker 2: Film Institute, they've all ranked it as one of the
Speaker 2: greatest American films. And it does, I think, set a
Speaker 2: new bar for what Lynch is going to do after this.
Speaker 2: The surrealism of a rais Ahead, the humanity of Elephant Man,
Speaker 2: the weirdness of June, they all get channeled from here
Speaker 2: on out into this kind of exploration of the American
Speaker 2: dream and the American suburbs and the reality of what
Speaker 2: it looks like to live in America, to be sane
Speaker 2: in America, to be crazy in America. Yeah, and this
Speaker 2: is also I just have some incredibly beautiful movie and
Speaker 2: huge moment here because the music is by Angelo bad Lamente,
Speaker 2: who had gone to do the Twin Peaks music, which
Speaker 2: is some of the best music that's ever been made
Speaker 2: for TV or film. So yeah, Blue Velvet, I would say,
Speaker 2: if you are somebody you watch a lot of the
Speaker 2: stuff we watch, you watch Game of Thrones, Blue Velvet
Speaker 2: will seem relatively tame to you now, though it may
Speaker 2: still manage to shock you. But I would say this
Speaker 2: is a great place to start and see whether you
Speaker 2: would like Lynch as his general work. But I would
Speaker 2: also say, at the same time, he has almost a
Speaker 2: film for everyone, which I think is really interesting.
Speaker 1: This movie starts with a scene that I didn't understand
Speaker 1: when I was first saw it, but that I get
Speaker 1: now as an encapsulation of, to me, the main thing
Speaker 1: that Lynch was interested in. So the camera travels to
Speaker 1: this you know, sleepy suburban, you know, idyllic everywhere kind
Speaker 1: of town, and it goes down the sunny streets of
Speaker 1: these beautiful like clapboard houses with the white picket fences,
Speaker 1: and then it goes past like laundry, and then it
Speaker 1: goes down and it looks at like a lawn, like
Speaker 1: a beautiful green lawn, and it goes into the lawn
Speaker 1: and down through the lawn, and then underneath the surface
Speaker 1: of the lawn there's like all these insects and worms
Speaker 1: and things and they're all churning and there's this sound
Speaker 1: of like whoa. And really that was what Lynch was
Speaker 1: getting at all the time. Yeah, like just below the
Speaker 1: surface there is this and that brings us to his
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, the magna. You're absolutely right. This is
Speaker 1: his kind of like breakthrough work. Twin Peaks, the television
Speaker 1: show that is ostensibly a murder mystery that aired on
Speaker 1: ABC from which is just absolutely bonkers. This was I
Speaker 1: recall dimly a sensation.
Speaker 2: Yes, even in England, we were guessing kind of this
Speaker 2: idea of like, oh, it's this American soap opera, it's
Speaker 2: this new kind of and then suddenly people are like,
Speaker 2: oh wait a minute, it's like much weirder and stranger.
Speaker 2: Though ironically, poor David Lynch trapped himself because by pitching
Speaker 2: the show as a mystery, the network and the audience
Speaker 2: became obsessed with solving the mystery. There was a phone
Speaker 2: number that you could there was a phone number, and
Speaker 2: then you ended up in a situation where by season
Speaker 2: two you had to solve it. And then it becomes
Speaker 2: a problem because then people don't want to watch it anymore,
Speaker 2: and then the show gets canceled. But then, obviously, twenty
Speaker 2: five years later, which is what Dave Lynch you know,
Speaker 2: had teased at the end of the show, they did
Speaker 2: make season three Twin Peaks. The return, which actually had
Speaker 2: some ended up becoming some of the most iconic moments
Speaker 2: from Twin Peaks, whether it was the Michael Sarah appearance
Speaker 2: or whether it was him telling Denise, you know, the
Speaker 2: trans character that he was like where I told those clowns,
Speaker 2: you know when you became Denise, fix your hearts or die,
Speaker 2: which has become kind of a rallying cry in the
Speaker 2: trans community. I love this show because every time I
Speaker 2: watch it, I'm still like, oh my god, this is
Speaker 2: so weird. Like it's very rare that you can watch
Speaker 2: rewatch something multiple times, because I've seen it multiple times
Speaker 2: and still just be like, whoa, this is so crazy,
Speaker 2: Like how did this get put on TV?
Speaker 1: I too, have seen it multiple times, and I will
Speaker 1: tell you that, sitting here now, I am still not
Speaker 1: entirely sure what happened, you know, especially as down the
Speaker 1: stretch of season one and into season two, it starts
Speaker 1: to get exceedingly dreamlike with the appearance of you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: the Giant and the small Man and the dreams, and
Speaker 1: then and then the Law of the Woman with the
Speaker 1: log Lady. There are many strange things. The appearance of
Speaker 1: Bob the demonic character like it is weird as hell.
Speaker 1: I like it, but definitely if you haven't seen it,
Speaker 1: definitely see it. But also don't expect the solving of
Speaker 1: it to be a straight force.
Speaker 2: The solving of it is not The point was never
Speaker 2: the point and got trapped into that. The point is
Speaker 2: the vibe and the freedom and the budget that Lynch
Speaker 2: was given to make this truly otherworldly American soap op
Speaker 2: fora which is so unique and I mean so unbelievably influential,
Speaker 2: aside from the fact that it's been referenced in everything
Speaker 2: from like Twin Peaks to every late night I mean
Speaker 2: to Simpsons to every late night show to The Family Guy, whatever,
Speaker 2: but also for example, one of my favorite shows, which
Speaker 2: we all know is equally held in high esteme to
Speaker 2: Twin Peaks is Riverdale never exists. Without this show, never exists. Hannibal,
Speaker 2: NBC is never letting Hannibal, which, by the way, if
Speaker 2: you still haven't seen it. One of the most incredibly
Speaker 2: violent and strange broadcast shows to.
Speaker 1: Every one of the TV.
Speaker 2: On NBC every time that no way that exists without this.
Speaker 2: Another Brian Fuller show that everybody loves, Pushing Daisies, deeply
Speaker 2: inspired aesthetically by List launched the careers of sherylyn Fenn.
Speaker 2: Icon put Kyle McLaughlin on that big, big every person
Speaker 2: in America knew who he was and knew who Agent
Speaker 2: Dale Cooper was map outside of the college cinemas and
Speaker 2: the places that were showing Lynch's movies before this. Also
Speaker 2: mad Chinamcheck another one of my favorite actresses who was
Speaker 2: launched from this, and it did lead to one of
Speaker 2: the movies I think is one of the best movies,
Speaker 2: which is Twin Peaks fire Walk with Me, which was
Speaker 2: kind of David Lynch's follow up. And yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: it's it's so hard to try and talk about him
Speaker 2: in a tiny way or a short way because there's
Speaker 2: just so much substance to his work and what it
Speaker 2: has done. But we will talk more about David Lynch
Speaker 2: after a message from us bock am I back.
Speaker 1: After Twin Peaks. Lynch really during Twin Peaks. Kind of
Speaker 1: off the heat of Twin Peaks, Lynch returned to the
Speaker 1: big screen with Wild at Heart, which I would describe
Speaker 1: as if you've seen the movie Badlands by Terrence Malick,
Speaker 1: is one.
Speaker 2: Of the most influential movies of all.
Speaker 1: Time, influential and beautifully shot movies ever, ever, ever, of
Speaker 1: all time about it's basically a Bonnie and Young Bonnie
Speaker 1: and Clyde story. Yeah, these two young ones, yeah, who
Speaker 1: just want to be together, and they reject the world
Speaker 1: and they want to go off and live on their
Speaker 1: own terms, and it all comes to a head in
Speaker 1: a kind of violent showdown. Wild at Heart is like that,
Speaker 1: but it kind of like the flips of the darker
Speaker 1: side of the coin. You have and Sailor. Who are
Speaker 1: these two crazy kids who just want to be together.
Speaker 1: There they're incredibly in love, they can't stop thinking about
Speaker 1: each other each other, but their lives are intertwined with
Speaker 1: various evil, violent, brutal characters, of which I think William
Speaker 1: Dafoe's Bobby Peru is like the most disturbing. And I
Speaker 1: like this film, but I will say I think this
Speaker 1: is the film where I'm like, Okay, that was too
Speaker 1: much violence.
Speaker 2: You were like for Jason, you were like, this is
Speaker 2: too much for me. I mean it does open with
Speaker 2: like a brutal murder just in public, and then just there.
Speaker 2: It's not it's not gotting any I will say I
Speaker 2: love the aesthetic of this movie. I am a big fan,
Speaker 2: probably for many the deep seated reasons. I need to
Speaker 2: talk to my therapist about all these kinds of movies,
Speaker 2: like I love I love bad Lands by Terrorists Malik,
Speaker 2: I love True Romance, the Tony scool when in Tarantino movie.
Speaker 2: It's one of my all time favorite movies. I actually,
Speaker 2: in hindsight, when I was younger, I was a big
Speaker 2: critic of Natural Born Killers, and I felt like it
Speaker 2: was I thought it was cool, but I felt like
Speaker 2: I had a lot of problems. Now as an adult,
Speaker 2: I think it was like unbelievably pressy and fantastic movie.
Speaker 2: And I do really love this movie. In the scale
Speaker 2: of these movies that are essentially the same movie, this
Speaker 2: is low on the scale for me, just because there
Speaker 2: is a little bit the seediness aspect. Yeah, and I
Speaker 2: feel like there's less of the freedom trying to find
Speaker 2: freedom from like the constraints of society. But I love
Speaker 2: the way that it plays out kind of Wizard of Oz,
Speaker 2: Like we even get like an actual Glinda the Goodwitch appearance.
Speaker 2: I think Nick Cage's performance in this is so fantastic.
Speaker 1: It's like a how to describe him. He's like the
Speaker 1: most like like if you took a boy scout and
Speaker 1: you put him in jail. Yeah, same time, and then
Speaker 1: somehow the boy scout like thrived in jail but kept
Speaker 1: that inherent goodness of a boy scout and then is released.
Speaker 1: That is Nicholas Cage's character in this film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's he's so just delightfully in love and he
Speaker 2: loves romance. And I will say I really love Laura
Speaker 2: Dunn in this role. She never gets to play roles
Speaker 2: like this. It's it's unabashedly like sexual and sexy and free.
Speaker 2: And I also just like love the car asked. He
Speaker 2: brings together a lot of his favorite players Isabella Ussalini,
Speaker 2: Harry De's Stanton, sheryln Fenn and Will obviously Willem Crispin Glover,
Speaker 2: Diane Laddel, Laura Dunn. I'm a Nicholas. I'm just the
Speaker 2: true Nicholas Cage superstan so anything he's in. I do
Speaker 2: have affinity and a love for it. And he told
Speaker 2: a great story about this movie recently, which was at
Speaker 2: the can Film Festival dinner. The president of the Can
Speaker 2: Jury was obsessed with the scene where Nicholas Cage sings
Speaker 2: love Me Tender, which is like, there's a lot of
Speaker 2: Elvis Presley illusions in here. He's very inspired by Elvis
Speaker 2: and kind of has the swagger of Elvis. And she
Speaker 2: wanted him to sing it, like on this tape in
Speaker 2: this table in front of everyone, and he didn't want
Speaker 2: to do it. And then he said that Lynch like
Speaker 2: started banging on the table and calling him his nickname, Nicksta.
Speaker 2: Get up there and sing it, Nicksta, gone see it?
Speaker 2: And he sung it. And the film run the the
Speaker 2: Palm d'Or can and you know, Nick was like, I
Speaker 2: did my thing. But I love that story. I love
Speaker 2: how David Lynch kind of inspired these places. And again
Speaker 2: this puts both Laura Dunn and Nicholas Cage in a
Speaker 2: whole different.
Speaker 1: Incredible performance by them, incredibly unhinged performance by Willem Dafoe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, setting up a lot of his future performances.
Speaker 1: Yeah, here's your spoiler for the podcast episode, he has
Speaker 1: maybe the gorious death that I've ever seen in a film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's not like a distinct like torture porn movie
Speaker 2: or something.
Speaker 1: I mean it is like, oh man, it is graphic
Speaker 1: and crazy. One thing that's notable about this film, which
Speaker 1: is not admit it's not my favorite Lynch. I think
Speaker 1: it's a little too you said it, it's a little too.
Speaker 2: Like leaning into the seediness.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a little too celebratory about the violence in
Speaker 1: a way and the sexual violence in a way that
Speaker 1: I think other Lynch films are not quite that.
Speaker 2: You know, I'll say, Lynch, this is something a lot
Speaker 2: of people have been coming to. I saw Gia my
Speaker 2: del Tora talk about this, and I loved it because
Speaker 2: I think it's very true. He is an incredibly sincere
Speaker 2: man and everything he does is sincere. And what that
Speaker 2: means is in a movie like this, it doesn't necessarily
Speaker 2: have like the satirical edge of a natural born Killers,
Speaker 2: which I think when you watch it in an age
Speaker 2: of influences, you are just like, oh my god, this
Speaker 2: was like he was so all of ausd and was
Speaker 2: so ahead of his time with this movie. But so
Speaker 2: with Lynch, everything is much more sincere and as it seems,
Speaker 2: and I think in that case when he goes like
Speaker 2: extra violent or extra sexually violent, you don't there's no
Speaker 2: other way to read it. But it does fit into
Speaker 2: the kind of dream like world that he crafts.
Speaker 1: One thing that is notable from this movie that actually
Speaker 1: I think he started with Dune is his penchant for
Speaker 1: out of left field castings of musicians, So he has
Speaker 1: Sting as Fade Ralpha famously in Dune. In Wild at
Speaker 1: Heart he casts avant garde jazz musician John Lourie as Sparky.
Speaker 2: Yes, one of my all time favorites.
Speaker 1: I'm a great film starring John Lourie. Go see that film,
Speaker 1: and that continues with his next film, Lost Highway, A
Speaker 1: I think like a really cool.
Speaker 2: This is actually one of my favorite dark This is
Speaker 2: one of my noir that I agree.
Speaker 1: This is one of my favorites as well. That casts
Speaker 1: Henry Rollins in the movie and other interesting musician casting,
Speaker 1: and is also notable for having like Robert Blake in
Speaker 1: what is clearly his strangest role before going to prison
Speaker 1: for murder.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, and it really is like it feels
Speaker 2: very timely. Also, just like you know what David Lynch
Speaker 2: had aside from the you know, great understanding of music
Speaker 2: as a musician himself. He did all the music originally
Speaker 2: on a rais Ahead, and he would direct many music videos,
Speaker 2: and also Trent Rezna helped with the soundtrack for which
Speaker 2: obviously establishes then you know his great career that he's
Speaker 2: had as a scorer of incredible movie soundtracks. But also
Speaker 2: he understood the great American tradition of the character actor
Speaker 2: Gary Busey movie he knew, and with Willem Dafoe in
Speaker 2: You Know, Wild at Heart, he understood how having an
Speaker 2: unexpectedly brilliant short performance or almost a cameo, even a
Speaker 2: passing performance could just absolutely add so much substance and
Speaker 2: to a movie. I love Lost Highway. We show this
Speaker 2: one a lot in the bar where I worked at
Speaker 2: the cinema. If the FBI is listening, we had permission,
Speaker 2: I guess. But yeah, it's great because I find it's
Speaker 2: funny because at the time people were like, it's very incoherent.
Speaker 2: I find this movie very easy to follow, but it's
Speaker 2: essentially neo noir. Mysterious intercom message Dick Laron is dead,
Speaker 2: and then you start to kind of explore via VHS
Speaker 2: tapes and strange parties, this kind of cee the underbelly
Speaker 2: of Hollywood. That is this really cool, super rad, neo noir.
Speaker 2: I also deeply love Patricia Arquette. And we know there's
Speaker 2: a lot of Bill Pullman fans out there, a lot
Speaker 2: of women who love Bill Pullman. They've never gotten over
Speaker 2: him after his starring role as a dad in Caspar.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I love this movie. I think it's really
Speaker 2: really fun, really strange. I think it streamlines to the
Speaker 2: two versions of David Lynch. It is a really interesting
Speaker 2: story that hooks you, but it is also a dreamlike
Speaker 2: narrative that is totally viby, that makes you question what
Speaker 2: you've seen. But by the end I feel like, oh, okay,
Speaker 2: I understand what's going on. It's kind of like a
Speaker 2: Mobius strip of a movie. Yeah, I really like that one.
Speaker 2: I think it was underrated at the time, but you
Speaker 2: know what, I love that he went from one of
Speaker 2: his weirdest scene at the time as like strangest movies,
Speaker 2: and then he was like, I'm making a straight story, baby,
Speaker 2: it's happening.
Speaker 1: We go right to nineteen ninety Nine's the straight story
Speaker 1: which I think if you wanted to tell if we
Speaker 1: wanted to tell you what film to watch, if you
Speaker 1: wanted to just watch a quote unquote watch.
Speaker 2: Normal with Your Family by Walt Disney, by the way,
Speaker 2: which again huge change of pace after many De Laurenti's
Speaker 2: kind of art house space movies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a movie that feels like this is
Speaker 1: David Lynch doing a Richard Linkletter film. It feels like that,
Speaker 1: a very grounded story about a man who his only
Speaker 1: means of transportation, for various reasons because of his age
Speaker 1: and because of his history, is a riding mower that
Speaker 1: he then dedicates himself to driving some two hundred plus
Speaker 1: miles to see his brother, to see his brother who
Speaker 1: he can't see otherwise. And it's a beautiful, small, very
Speaker 1: sparse story about this man and the way his life
Speaker 1: interconnects with other people. It is an extremely sincere movie
Speaker 1: to your point. And it's a beautiful It's a beautiful,
Speaker 1: wonderful film.
Speaker 2: It really is. And also I love that it was.
Speaker 2: Roger Ebott was like such a huge fan of this movie,
Speaker 2: and he was kind of like even comparing the dialogue
Speaker 2: to Ernest Hemingway, he was like, this is masterful, authentic,
Speaker 2: true dialogue E. But it was like an original Lynch
Speaker 2: because he felt like everything was too violent, everything was
Speaker 2: too over sexualized. So I love that this kind of
Speaker 2: opened up the audience. Once again, there's probably hundreds of
Speaker 2: thousands of people who've watched this movie and had no
Speaker 2: idea that it was directly Oh for sure, you don't know,
Speaker 2: this could be anybody.
Speaker 1: This could be Ron Howard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really could be Ron Howard, but it probably
Speaker 2: wouldn't have It still has that little bit of grit,
Speaker 2: and it still has your Harry Dean Stanton, your sissy spacek,
Speaker 2: you know. And I yet I was not a fat obviously.
Speaker 2: I was like a kid when this movie came out,
Speaker 2: and I was very much in the mindset of, like,
Speaker 2: I don't like boring things like Boo Walt Disney. I
Speaker 2: was like twelve, I was very contrarian. But as I've
Speaker 2: grown older, I find this to be like a very
Speaker 2: sweet movie. I love a movie about male friendship. Magic
Speaker 2: like XXL really changed my life because I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: a movie that is sincerely about men just being friends
Speaker 2: and how important it is to have like healthy male
Speaker 2: friendships is like an incredibly powerful thing, And yes I
Speaker 2: am talking about Magic Mike EXXL. The strip of movie
Speaker 2: truly one of the greatest movies ever made, and that
Speaker 2: made me kind of revisit other great male friendship movies.
Speaker 2: And I love this and I think the ending of
Speaker 2: this movie gets me every time, especially now Harry Dean
Speaker 2: Stanton has passed. And yeah, I mean I love that movie.
Speaker 2: It's it's a real sweet.
Speaker 1: Wonderful story about a guy that loves his brother. Hold
Speaker 1: on helicopter going over. Next up two thousand and one's
Speaker 1: mal Holland Drive, which I think is very much in
Speaker 1: the vein of Lost Highway.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's part of that kind of triptick of movies.
Speaker 2: He did Lost Highway, Mahalan Drive inlands Win Empire, the
Speaker 2: La triptych.
Speaker 1: The La triptick, the kind of constant you know, focusing
Speaker 1: on not even necessarily the underbelly, but like the other
Speaker 1: side of La, that's not cool, that's not seen up
Speaker 1: in the hills, the dark side of the valley.
Speaker 2: What we do rich people do in the hills when
Speaker 2: you can't see them, Like what happens? What are the
Speaker 2: parties that you're not getting invited to? Like, what are
Speaker 2: the strange interactions.
Speaker 1: This film again with the interesting casting of musicians. It
Speaker 1: has a wonderful performance by Billy Ray Cyrus, father of
Speaker 1: Miley Cyrus, country star in his own right. He gets
Speaker 1: to beat the fucking shit out of Justin throw in
Speaker 1: a very I think funny scene. This is another movie
Speaker 1: that it feels very like Lost Highway. People will say, oh,
Speaker 1: it's weird, it's a little confused. This is like one
Speaker 1: of the more again, I think one of the more normal.
Speaker 2: I think, especially if you are someone who's watched a
Speaker 2: lot of movies. Yeah, you understand the kind of the
Speaker 2: context and the things that it's taking from and the
Speaker 2: road that it's going down. And it's very much in
Speaker 2: that kind of persona in mar Bergmann space. It's like
Speaker 2: what does it mean to be a woman? Like? Are
Speaker 2: all women the same? Are women different? Can you just
Speaker 2: become another person? Like? Very interesting, cool stuff. Also extremely
Speaker 2: gay movie. I realize now that me and Donald both gay.
Speaker 2: We were like we were went to see this movie
Speaker 2: and we're like wearing like blonde wigs. Afterwards, like oh
Speaker 2: my god, Like we're in more Holland Drive. It's like,
Speaker 2: oh yeah, this is like extreme queer cinema in its
Speaker 2: own way, kind of a way that has been like,
Speaker 2: you know, found love. Also, Angelo bad Lamenti, he's in
Speaker 2: this movie, the the incredible composer. Speaking of great musicians. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think this is a fantastic movie. I think it's
Speaker 2: a really interesting movie about la I think that Justin
Speaker 2: Thureau is like probably not the actor he is if
Speaker 2: he doesn't have this experience, because he's another person as
Speaker 2: a writer and actor who shows up in really unexpected places.
Speaker 1: And I think it's a fun role for him too,
Speaker 1: because he's I think a striking looking guy, a great
Speaker 1: looking guy, the kind of person that you would think, oh,
Speaker 1: that's a star of like a soap opera or the
Speaker 1: lead of a of a network television drama. And he's
Speaker 1: just like getting bamboozled and slapped around.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, and.
Speaker 1: Willing to do it. And to your point, it is
Speaker 1: really very much about what weird and mundane things are
Speaker 1: the rich people up to up there in the hills
Speaker 1: where no one can see them. They're they're having scuffles
Speaker 1: in their driveway, They're having like weird arguments. They're talking
Speaker 1: about things in boardrooms where you can't have access to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's very much about that.
Speaker 3: I A.
Speaker 2: So this is like a pre reality TV time as
Speaker 2: well as you think about it. So it's like now
Speaker 2: a lot of that mystique has gone selling Sunset you're
Speaker 2: seeing inside the houses or whatever, But back then it
Speaker 2: was definitely played in to this mystique, and I yeah,
Speaker 2: I loved that. I remember thinking it was like so
Speaker 2: enigmatic and brilliant. And also I love that all the
Speaker 2: people in this movie, from Naomi Watts to Justin Throw,
Speaker 2: they all have like completely different versions of what they
Speaker 2: think this movie is about, which I think is just
Speaker 2: so good. I'm like, that's how you know you made
Speaker 2: like a super weird and fantastic movie.
Speaker 1: And then finally, his final film, two thousand and six
Speaker 1: is Inland Empire. Very different movie structurally, but also like
Speaker 1: the other two movies in this La Trio is kind
Speaker 1: of based around a crime mystery. That's the hook that
Speaker 1: gets you into it.
Speaker 2: He was very good at hooking people with a simplistic notion,
Speaker 2: right of like there's a woman and something bad is
Speaker 2: gonna happen to her. But I think it has a
Speaker 2: very similar vibe to Mulholland Drive when it comes to
Speaker 2: the themes of like becoming a different person and like
Speaker 2: can a movie change your life and make you completely
Speaker 2: disassociate and reimagine who you are. And this is also
Speaker 2: his one movie about making movies, Yeah, which I always
Speaker 2: think is really really interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is the first time he's really I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's in Lost Highway, It's yeah, yeah, it
Speaker 1: kind of intersects a little bit, but this is really
Speaker 1: the film that is I mean, and it's in Mulholland
Speaker 1: Drive too, But this is really the film that is
Speaker 1: about what the artist has to do to try and
Speaker 1: make a piece of art in m m a Hollywood
Speaker 1: type of system that is in many cases set against him.
Speaker 2: And also just like how exploit it of the Hollywood
Speaker 2: system can be. I feel like, I'm not this feels
Speaker 2: like a final movie, you know. It feels like somebody
Speaker 2: who maybe needs to think about what he's going to do.
Speaker 2: Then he did a lot of incredible stuff. He also
Speaker 2: was getting very into, like or at least publicly, transcendental meditation,
Speaker 2: which I learned he introduced Shaka Khan to I mean,
Speaker 2: what a duo like very legendary. But yeah, this is
Speaker 2: a really interesting movie, quite a somber movie, I would
Speaker 2: say as well, not that many of his are like
Speaker 2: full of laughs, but like you said, there are it
Speaker 2: feels like a good humor, but this feels, yeah, it's
Speaker 2: it's very somber. And after this break, we're going to
Speaker 2: do a speed run of quick questions about Lynch and
Speaker 2: our recommendations for where you should start, and we're back.
Speaker 1: Okay, first question, what makes Lynch unique in the world
Speaker 1: of cinema.
Speaker 2: To you, Rosie, I am gonna say it is that sincerity,
Speaker 2: whether it's on screen, and he's just really believes that
Speaker 2: every single thing that he's putting on screen is really important.
Speaker 2: It's not ironic, it's not purposefully campy. These are things
Speaker 2: he thinks are important to be a part of the story.
Speaker 2: And also off screen, I think a lot. And I
Speaker 2: relate deeply to a story that he told, which was
Speaker 2: about how he was driving down the side of like
Speaker 2: a highway and he saw these five woody woodpecker stuffed
Speaker 2: toys like hanging up at the side of a shop
Speaker 2: and he felt like he needed to save them and
Speaker 2: bring them into his life. And then, of course, in
Speaker 2: a classic Lynch turn, he was like, and then they
Speaker 2: became like, you know, too powerful and I had to
Speaker 2: let them go or whatever. But that sincerity of you know,
Speaker 2: I remember being that person who like sees a plush
Speaker 2: toy in like a CBS looking sad and being like,
Speaker 2: I don't want but for some reason this is connecting
Speaker 2: with me, and I need to take it home because
Speaker 2: otherwise I'm gonna feel guilty that I like that sincerity.
Speaker 2: I like his love of cinema. I think his love
Speaker 2: for making stuff and the sincerity with which he does
Speaker 2: to me is very unique. What about you any Yeah?
Speaker 1: For me, it's his dedication to art as a and
Speaker 1: the idea of creativity in the context of film and television,
Speaker 1: and the way he was able to bring a lot
Speaker 1: of these different things into a mainstream context in ways
Speaker 1: that still seem crazy that they were successful. The intertextuality,
Speaker 1: the different ways to tell stories, the hidden meanings, the
Speaker 1: dream within a dream, the plot within a plot. Are
Speaker 1: we watching a story that is about someone's dream of
Speaker 1: what happened? Has everybody already died?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: All of these things are valid questions when watching a
Speaker 1: lot of Lynch's work, and as navel gazing and annoying
Speaker 1: is some as stuff like that can be. His doesn't
Speaker 1: feel like that. It feels like a situation in which
Speaker 1: the whole is more important than any one piece of
Speaker 1: whatever the story he's creating us. It's the entire vibe,
Speaker 1: the photography, the performances he has. His films have this
Speaker 1: like glossy look like they just put a lot of
Speaker 1: like vasoline on.
Speaker 2: The lens, old school thing that he loves to do.
Speaker 1: All of that together, the violence, juxtaposed with the beauty,
Speaker 1: juxtaposed with the sincerity, juxtaposed with the lying, the evil,
Speaker 1: maniacal faces, all of that together creates a feeling that
Speaker 1: I think is is really unique. And it's about creating
Speaker 1: these emotions and feelings and vibes within the viewer that
Speaker 1: leave you thinking where even if you don't quite understand
Speaker 1: the movie or the TV show what have you, you're
Speaker 1: thinking about it, you know, And I think that's a
Speaker 1: hard thing to do. It's like Donnie Darko was a
Speaker 1: movie that it had an incredible moment in time and
Speaker 1: I didn't know what was going on, but then I
Speaker 1: heard the directors talking about what actually goes on in
Speaker 1: the movie, and then I never thought about that movie. Again.
Speaker 1: Lynch's movies are not like that where you know, it's
Speaker 1: like you're still trying to figure out and you'll ask
Speaker 1: other people who have seen stuff. But what do you
Speaker 1: think is.
Speaker 2: Happy conversations people are still going to be writing about.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's our next question is, like, how do
Speaker 2: you think his legacy will endure? I do think he
Speaker 2: will now be seen as one of the great American directors,
Speaker 2: which I think was not necessarily set in stone. But
Speaker 2: I do think the odd generation, this generation of critics
Speaker 2: of filmmakers, was so impacted by him and by his presence.
Speaker 2: I think he's going to be seen as one of
Speaker 2: the great Los Angeles filmmakers. And I also think you're right.
Speaker 2: I think the best thing about Lynch and his legacy
Speaker 2: and how it's going to keep going is because people
Speaker 2: are going to keep having those conversations. Film students are
Speaker 2: going to keep writing about these movies. People are going
Speaker 2: to keep discovering new things or exploring new spaces within
Speaker 2: his work or new ways it makes them feel. And
Speaker 2: I think that that is really really exciting. What do
Speaker 2: you think his most significant work is.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm just gonna say what I think. For me,
Speaker 1: it personally, it's blue Velvet because it's shocking, it's visually compelling.
Speaker 1: The performances are incredibly powerful and stark, and I think
Speaker 1: it's shot beautifully.
Speaker 2: Like The Early is a stunning movie.
Speaker 1: Wat just shot so well with the deep shadows and
Speaker 1: when he was using color, the rich colors, and I
Speaker 1: just think that that movie is just during amazing.
Speaker 2: Sl brings Isabella Rossalini to her acting phase and she's
Speaker 2: just so absolutely fantastic.
Speaker 1: Just amazing film that for me is the is the one.
Speaker 1: If I was to tell if someone was asking me
Speaker 1: if I had to see one Lynch thing, I'd be like,
Speaker 1: see blue Velvet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was gonna say, that's actually perfect because my
Speaker 2: if I was mine is I'm going to double them too.
Speaker 2: What is his most significant work and what would I
Speaker 2: tell somebody to watch. I'm going to go with Twin
Speaker 2: Peaks because I think it's even though it is inaccessible
Speaker 2: on the first watch of like trying to understand what
Speaker 2: Lynch might have been doing or the strangeness. I think
Speaker 2: you are experiencing it as it was meant to be experienced,
Speaker 2: which is just a random viewer on TV watching it.
Speaker 2: So if you are a newbie, you are the audience
Speaker 2: that was intended for. And I think that you will
Speaker 2: very quickly be able to understand whether or not you
Speaker 2: enjoy Lynch's work, his themes, his vibes, the strangeness, the
Speaker 2: unsettling nature, the gorgeous production design. Are you somebody who
Speaker 2: values narrative over vibes, maybe it won't be for you.
Speaker 2: Or are you someone who can get hooked into a
Speaker 2: character and follow them down the rabbit hole? So I
Speaker 2: think that both of those are I think that one
Speaker 2: answers both of those. I think Twin Peaks is his
Speaker 2: most significant work in my opinion, and I also do
Speaker 2: think it's a good place to start if you are
Speaker 2: a newbie for Twin Peaks. This is something we didn't
Speaker 2: touch on very much, but let's quickly talk about what's
Speaker 2: your favorite Lynch advertisement? Because he did a lot of
Speaker 2: weird ads.
Speaker 1: So this is a thing that many directors, you know,
Speaker 1: directors name directors Spike Lee, Wes, David Lynch, et cetera.
Speaker 1: You look at their Fike Jephy, Spike Jones, You look
Speaker 1: at their Spike Lee Spike Jones. You look at their
Speaker 1: filmography and it's like they really smoothe every five years.
Speaker 2: How do they make the money.
Speaker 1: How do they make money? The answer is they to
Speaker 1: their film commercials, and many of them are wonderful. David Fincher,
Speaker 1: Michael Bay. You know, commercials and videos is how a
Speaker 1: certain generation got their start, and it's how an older
Speaker 1: generation kept the lights on, really and you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of them are really interesting. I think there's one
Speaker 1: from Adidas which I forget the name of, but it's
Speaker 1: Adidas the Wall in which a runner. They were promoting
Speaker 1: like a new soul tech cushioning technology at the time,
Speaker 1: and this is an issue for runners, and you just
Speaker 1: see like this man like run up into the clouds,
Speaker 1: these kind of red tinged clouds. I also think his
Speaker 1: like His Obsession by Calvin Klein commercials are kind of iconic,
Speaker 1: like for the era, those were always on beautiful black
Speaker 1: and white and it would have that tagline an obsession.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Mine that I always think about are the PlayStation two,
Speaker 2: ads Heed It, the Third Space and the idea is
Speaker 2: it was meant to be like when you're an early
Speaker 2: adopter of technology, you see the world differently. But they're
Speaker 2: just super weird, very very erase ahead esthetic. Yes, lots
Speaker 2: of black and whites, heavy shadows. I always remember watching
Speaker 2: those and just thinking like, how cool that they got
Speaker 2: David Lynch to do that, which I kind of never
Speaker 2: really realized is also part of bringing a director on,
Speaker 2: you know, is to be you get to promote it
Speaker 2: and say, hey, look at our adverts for our adverts.
Speaker 2: It's part of the pr game. But yeah, those always
Speaker 2: stood out to me. Okay, what is your favorite random
Speaker 2: place that David Lynch shows up in another project?
Speaker 1: I mean, you mentioned it earlier, we talked about it earlier,
Speaker 1: but I do think part of the reason that Lynch
Speaker 1: I think one of the most important recent co signs
Speaker 1: of Lynch was Lynch his cameo in The Fableman's I
Speaker 1: think that that was its signalled Hey Spielberg, who is
Speaker 1: like the biggest exactly? That's that great box office mainstream
Speaker 1: like Titan of a Our Hitchcock r like john Ford.
Speaker 1: You know, he co signed Lynch with that cameo. Not
Speaker 1: that he needed it, but I do think that there's
Speaker 1: a certain like segment of the pop culture audience that
Speaker 1: was like, oh, I guess David Lynch is not just
Speaker 1: a weirdo like he's and so that one is my favorite.
Speaker 2: Yeah, He's not just a weirdo. Now he's like in
Speaker 2: this space where also he's playing a character. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: love that one. I think that's a great pick. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna pick the opposite end of the spectrum, which is
Speaker 2: in a show that I don't particularly like love or watch,
Speaker 2: but I love that it happened when somebody was just
Speaker 2: like called him and was like, hey, do you want
Speaker 2: to be in the Cleveland Show? And he was like, yuh.
Speaker 2: That to me is like the peak of David Lynch
Speaker 2: and why his weirdness is not just like an affectation.
Speaker 2: It is also like just that he's a true stone
Speaker 2: called Widow. And I love him and Jason as the
Speaker 2: musician in our well one of them, because we also
Speaker 2: have Aaron Now who's a truly fantastic musician. But what
Speaker 2: is your favorite piece of Lynch's work with music, whether
Speaker 2: like a music video or the work that he's done himself, Like,
Speaker 2: what what is it for you that stands out on
Speaker 2: the side of things?
Speaker 1: I think Chrisiazik's Wicked Game.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I love that song so much and that video
Speaker 2: is so iconic. I'll I watch it.
Speaker 1: Infinitely, absolutely, And at the time it was the song
Speaker 1: of like mm hmmm, it like erotically charged, like Moms
Speaker 1: in the Suburbs.
Speaker 2: Was like very they were getting off to it. And
Speaker 2: I think that is another thing that people don't understand
Speaker 2: about Lynch, is like it can often be seen as
Speaker 2: like violence against women, this, that, But there is a
Speaker 2: huge female fandom for David Lynch who find the work sexy,
Speaker 2: you who find it cool, And I think that's what
Speaker 2: he was able to direct into.
Speaker 1: And so that's that clearly his most iconic video work,
Speaker 1: right And also definitely it is the thing that makes
Speaker 1: me think, along with those Calvin Klein ads in this
Speaker 1: beautiful black and white, that I wish he would have
Speaker 1: done more black and white after Elephant Man in eraser Head.
Speaker 1: But it was also clearly a thing where like we're
Speaker 1: not giving you money if you want to make this fi. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I but I wish that he had made more
Speaker 1: black and white pictures because I think his black and
Speaker 1: white photography is beautiful, gorgeous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree, that's my favorite. I will again give
Speaker 2: that shout out to Trent Rezna working on Lost Highway soundtrack,
Speaker 2: because like that man has gone on to soundtrack some
Speaker 2: of the greatest movies, like especially if you like Electronic
Speaker 2: a weird movie soundtracks. The Girl with the Dragon Tatto,
Speaker 2: the American remake version has such a fantastic score. So yeah, Jason,
Speaker 2: I'm so glad we got to talk about David Lynch.
Speaker 2: This is so nice to just swing in to create
Speaker 2: as well and just chat to you about it. Well.
Speaker 1: Coming up next we're swinging into your friendly neighborhood Spider Man,
Speaker 1: and next week the Brave New World kicks off. The
Speaker 1: President is the Hulk already on the hot one, I
Speaker 1: mean not hot one, but you know, by te not sexy,
Speaker 1: not saying that sexy, but by temperature. We'll say more.
Speaker 2: About the.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 2: Bye.
Speaker 1: X ray Vision is hosted by Jason Concepcion and Rosie
Speaker 1: Knight and is a production of iHeart Podcast.
Speaker 2: Our executive producers are Joel Monique and Aaron Cortman.
Speaker 1: Our supervising producer is Abuzafar.
Speaker 2: Our producers are Common Laurent Dean Jonathan and Bay Wag.
Speaker 1: A theme song is by Brian Vasquez, with alternate theme
Speaker 1: songs by Aaron Kaufman.
Speaker 2: Special thanks to Soul Rubin, Chris Lord, Kenny Goodman, and
Speaker 2: Heidi Our discord moderator M.